UQÀM letter gives students an ultimatum

KAREN SEIDMAN, GAZETTE UNIVERSITIES REPORTER08.05.2012

“We need university directors who support education,” said Léonie Gagné, a UQÀM law student who didn't support the boycott but lost her semester. “We need a university that’s willing to say we’re going to teach.”

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MONTREAL - As university and CEGEP students throughout the province are preparing to start retaking votes to boycott classes over the tuition dispute, some students have been told if they miss the planned make-up sessions starting this month they will be out of options.

A letter that went out to students at the Université du Québec à Montréal says it took four weeks of planning to put together the make-up sessions and it would be impossible to organize anything like that again.

So the make-up sessions for the winter 2012 semester end on Sept. 30 and the new fall semester begins on Oct. 1, concludes the letter, signed by Diane Demers, vice-rector of academic support and student life. Students will have the opportunity to drop classes, without failing the course, right up until Sept. 30. But there are no refunds for students who opt out of classes.

So is UQÀM, the university that probably had the greatest number of students supporting the boycott, finally getting tough with protesting students?

Law student Léonie Gagné hopes so.

As someone who didn’t support the boycott, but lost her semester, she is more than a little angry with UQÀM officials. She believes the university failed students who tried to attend classes and were blocked by masked students.

So she is hoping Demers’s letter is an indication that that type of situation will no longer be tolerated.

“We need university directors who support education,” she said. “We need a university that’s willing to say we’re going to teach.”

Even if the make-up session, to begin Aug. 27, isn’t impeded by protesting students, it promises to be a gruelling semester, compressing 10 weeks of classes into five intensive weeks of going to school six days a week. Gagné has no idea when she will have time to study or how she will keep up her grades.

Jenny Desrochers, interim communications director at UQÀM, said the university is trying to accommodate students as best it can by giving them as long as possible to drop classes. That way, she said, if a student is finding the make-up session too difficult and is worried about failing, they can drop the course without having any failure on their transcript.

“We are trying to improve student services during that time to help students succeed,” she said.

Despite all this intricate planning on the part of universities and CEGEPs, there’s one thing no one knows for certain: whether or not students will show up for the make-up sessions. Certainly, letters like the one UQÀM sent may scare some students into abandoning the battle against tuition hikes, but even student leaders seem to be in the dark about how much support there will be to continue the protests after a relatively calm summer break.

“We know students will be debating these issues in their general assemblies, but it’s really hard to say which way it will go,” said Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesperson for the Coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE).

At the Université de Montréal, spokesperson Mathieu Filion said they are really hoping for a return to class on Aug. 27 for the make-up sessions as there are 1,641 classes that have to be made up.

“For us, the priority is to have students complete the winter 2012 semester,” he said.

There is no question the situation will be tense as the first votes start this week. There is a lot on the line, both for students who want to save their semester and for those who don’t want to see six months of protests fall by the wayside.

Students like Gagné are hoping that emotions have cooled off despite the heat of the last two months.

“I’m hoping that with Ms. Demers’ letter, Bill 78 and the last six months that the strikers will finally come to the conclusion that we, the students who don’t want to strike, have been penalized enough,” she said. And she hopes universities finally start to recognize that “no one has the right to force someone out of a class they want to attend.”

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